A growing number of America’s citizenry will do just about anything to “WIN” these days, whether it is cheating on an exam, paying players to physically harm an opponent on the field of play, or defaming a young woman on facebook out of sheer jealousy until she takes her life. For the troubled who see themselves as losers in life, the big ‘win’ is shooting your classmates or fellow workers indiscriminately – the, “I will show them” ‘win’. For others, hiding evidence of fraud in business, gaming the system, or commiting perjury in a court of law is just another day at work. It doesn’t seem to matter any more. Everything is relative you know. I am a product of time, chance, and primordial soup, so leave me alone and let me squirm through life the way I want! Survival of the fittest, remember?
What has the world come to? Get even? Get out of my way, or I’ll shoot, stab, steal you blind, or bludgeon you to death? Doesn’t matter. I have a right to do my thing, my way, when I want, how I want, and with whom I want! So get out of my way or else! I will run you down, run you over, and if I have to, I will destroy you. Whatever it takes. I will WIN!
‘Winning’ for far too many, no longer includes honesty, humility, character, and hard work deserving of respect. It has become something stunningly less, even cunning. To the self absorbed, disenchanted, disaffected and spiritually lost amongst us, it now means attaining status in your own eyes and the eyes of your peers, getting your name in the newspaper or on television, a cheap thrill to prove you are ‘cool’. Unfortunately it only proves how lost we really are.
“Winning” has become about the self, serving ME, not the self sacrificial service of others.
Could the problem be that we…
I. Have other Gods we serve, like ourselves, and not Him?
II. Have lots of idols, like persons and things?
III. Talk only superficially and disdainfully of God and His Son?
IV. Forget what is holy and worthy or our time?
V. Dishonor our parents?
VI. Take the lives of others who get in our way, if not literally, at least in our minds?
VII. Throw away our morals, if we ever had any?
VIII. Steal?
IX. Lie about others whenever it suits us?
X. Are consumed by what others have that we want but don’t have? Exodus 20.
God help us! Come to think of it, He has! America’s last hope is not the spirit of this age, but the life giving, transforming Spirit that is from God. Nothing has really changed since the Garden. Mankind is still alone, separated from God, sin filled and sin pursuing, incapable of saving himself apart from the work of God in his or her life. Unless we rediscover the humility of the God who humbled Himself, coming to His own creation to die the death of a common criminal, and turn to Him, we will not discover who we really are. We will fall short of the glory of God, which is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”